


A History of Desert Bluffs

by closetcellist



Series: Lil' Bit of Lovecraft [1]
Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Desert Bluffs, Eldritch Abomination Kevin, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-19
Updated: 2014-05-19
Packaged: 2018-01-25 19:37:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1660040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/closetcellist/pseuds/closetcellist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A look into the possibilities of what Desert Bluffs might be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A History of Desert Bluffs

**Author's Note:**

> Written before episode 47, so it contains no spoilers for that. Probably counts as an AU now.

There had been a Desert Bluffs before there was a StrexCorp, though no one really remembered it. The town itself was old, as old as Night Vale, which had forgotten a lot of its own history, like a coma patient waking at 80 but remembering only that they were 12 when they went to sleep. Lloiger used to rule Desert Bluffs, though it had adapted, along with Zhar, to this world better than many in their pantheon. Over the centuries, it forgot the Plateau of Sung from which they had escaped, spent more and more time partially contained in the human shell that allowed its worshippers, and then its subjects, to approach and then to leave again _nearly_ as whole as they’d come in. Lloiger…Kevin, his shell was called, and later himself as he forgot…could be fickle and wrathful, certainly dangerous, never _good_ , but it was important to remember that Desert Bluffs had existed for centuries and it had never been empty; it had always been a town, and it had always been Kevin’s.

However, while time might flow differently there, and while the sand wastes that surrounded it kept many at bay, it had never been _invisible_. There had been explorers, researchers, once or twice artists, who found the place and stayed, sometimes even by choice. But there had also been a few who found out just enough and left. Lloiger, and then Kevin, didn’t mind; barely noticed. He thought differently than these beings of flesh and marrow, and would never have been able to conceive of any of them as dangerous.

Reports about the two towns drifted in academic circles, believed best by those at Miskatonic University, who had enough understanding of the reality of things to see and understand the clues and patterns. Most filed them away and warned their students to avoid the desert where the towns seemed to exist. But as time passed, and science progressed, and men’s curiosity grew to overtake their good sense, there were some who began to speak of containment, and later, of alterations and control.

A team of scientists, experimental physicists, xenobiologists, and theologists specializing in the ancient and obscure entered Desert Bluffs, and Kevin purred over the “radio,” words reaching his people on the psychic wind, that there were guests in town and they should be treated to a warm Desert Bluffs welcome. He meant it—he always liked new toys.

The most docile of the citizens gathered and helped the team find a place for their equipment, shiny, metallic, and so foreign in the intensely organic setting of their town. Things were better when Kevin was happy[1] after all. But the outsiders saw only scared and scarred shells of people, trapped in a too literally visceral Hell, and they knew they were needed and would help them, fix things.

They had come with a plan; it took a while to get the frequency right, and they lost several generators to blood-related short-outs, but they did it, more quickly than any could have hoped and, as it turned out, just in time to save themselves.

Kevin had had a headache since the outsiders arrived. Most of his people, even the new ones, existed as pleasant little buzzes in his consciousness. He could track them and hold them, keep them or let them go. Not _quite_ control them, but near enough. But these people—they itched. They felt like crawling and shaking and acid rain, and Kevin was getting fed up. He had been thinking of the best way to purge his land of this issue, whether he would turn them into sacrifices (and risk indigestion) or simply boot them out to wander the sand wastes and escape if they could, when suddenly, things…shifted.

A being used to sickness might have described the feeling as vertigo, or a dizziness induced by no sleep and a fever. But Kevin had never been sick; could not, in fact, be sick in the same way as these humans, and all he knew was that the world—his town—felt just out of his reach and it was _terrible_. His concentration was shot, and he found he could only partially manifest, stuck half in and half out of his human shell.

He had to search for them—couldn’t sense them the way he should be able to—and by the time he found them he was enraged. But they had expected this, and were prepared, as well as they could be. Their machine had tapped into the city, its resonance, altered it just enough, and Kevin was connected to the city, but not quite enough, not right anymore. They had their guns, which stung but didn’t kill, nor really wound, and Kevin took out many of their guards (when had they gotten so many? Where had they come from?) but in the end they caught him, trapped him with some words, spoken in a tongue so few remembered these days, and took him into their bright and clean and terrible building to be fixed.

He wakes up on a table, a new sensation and unpleasant, strapped down and aware only of himself and a tense shaking burning around his head. He is aware of his muscles and his skin and cannot feel the town and for the first time in his existence he is scared. It is an unfocused fear, small and vague, but it is there and Kevin does not recognize it and does not like it. “It’s conscious,” he hears, and the voice is one part worried and one part triumphant. He will learn this voice is Douglas, and later Strex Director Douglas, but for now it is simply the voice connected with the tense shaking burning in his head and he does not like it. He tries to speak but there is something in his mouth, and something holding his head in place that does not let his chin move. The fear finds something to connect to and Kevin learns that fear and anger are twin obscenities just like him and Zhar and he tries to manifest. “Turn it up; same frequency, greater volume,” the voice says, shaking a little but firm. The tense shaking burning takes over his mind and he learns what pain is.

Kevin has many new experiences in that place and there is not one that he likes.

He forgets many things, things they did not need him to know. They cannot stop him from manifesting, not entirely, but they train him, Pavlov-style, that it is a bad thing that you do not do in polite company. Douglas is Strex Director Douglas when they let him leave and he is polite company. Desert Bluffs is StrexCorp’s town now, not Kevin’s, though they let him feel it again when he wouldn’t stop shrieking after they took it all away (one of the technicians would need a hearing aid for the rest of her life).

StrexCorp is good for the town, in its way. It believes it is good for the town. But it cannot change the basic structure, as hard as it tries, and instead is forced to lay its structure on top and force the pieces into its molds. The people have forgotten much, but know how to obey, and they think now that it must have been StrexCorp all along.

Kevin tries to be good in polite company but troubles start more quickly than they hoped because they hadn’t really understood him. The sacrifices were fun, yes, he enjoyed them, but they were also necessary. It didn’t have to be teeth (though that was his favorite)—the shape of the sacrifice didn’t matter—but it had to be something. He was starving and it made him angry deep inside where he was still Lloiger and he would take what he needed from these fragile human shells and—

StrexCorp and Director Douglas learned quickly. They brought him back in and he forgot again, only the sense memory connection of that building with pain and fear left, and they gave him forms to fill out for when he needed teeth and they put their structure over what they couldn’t change at the core.

There were still issues, and StrexCorp regulations became stricter and stricter as they tried to mold the town more closely to their initial goal. But progress with their primary method of behavior therapy had stalled, and while Kevin learned to fear and hate StrexCorp’s mandatory re-education without consciously remembering why, he simply could not become what they wanted him to be through the stick method alone.

As Director Douglas watched Night Vale (their next step, once they’d done all they could here), watched Carlos’ interactions with Zhar (or Cecil as he insisted he was called), he thought he might have discovered an appropriate carrot.

They’d had success in cloning before, and the resonance (though altered artificially by them) between the towns seemed to assist in the process. “Javier” was a real success, though the resonance had caused one of the less explainable Desert Bluffs anomalies and he came out with void-black eyes to match Kevin’s own. Javier remembered being a StrexCorp researcher, a xenobiologist (their own had left them, suddenly and violently, a few months ago, so this really would benefit everyone), and when Director Douglas called Kevin in, smiling (per Strex regulations, Cathy from Human Resources, that bitch, wouldn’t catch him on _that_ rule again), their meeting went swimmingly.

Kevin flushed, cheeks an ashy gray, and stammered, something the Strex team had never seen before. Javier looked with interest, and more than interest, at this entity who was clearly something other and more, and he couldn’t wait to find out what made him tick. On the radio that day, Kevin swooned over the newest edition to the StrexCorp family and didn’t even receive a reprimand for going off on a non-Strex related tangent.

Javier witnessed Kevin’s re-education a few times. As the new resident xenobiologist, he was brought in to ensure (to the best of any of their abilities) that Kevin wasn’t permanently damaged by the process. The first time, Javier frowned, thinking it was a shame they didn’t allow him to manifest, because he was sure it would be amazing to study his true or full form. Later he’d wince. One time, it would be his fault Kevin was there, and it would be only the knowledge that he could save Kevin from greater damage by being there that he was able to make himself stay.

Javier remembered what happened each time, even if Kevin didn’t. So when he saw the chance for them to be free from Strex, he took it.

 

* * *

 

[1] And what few citizens forgot, but the scientists never learned, was that Kevin could be happy, and could give as well as take. The town had existed for centuries, never empty, Kevin made sure of that. When the ground tried to split and swallow the town, Kevin disagreed and it never happened. And when the United States conducted secret tests of bombs that would melt the flesh and destroy the water and make the desert barren and uninhabitable, Kevin ate the radiation so his people wouldn’t have to.


End file.
